Our second day in Kyoto was much more focused as we only did three attractions: Ryoanji, a zen temple, first thing in the morning; a formal tea ceremony at a local cultural center in the late morning, and Fushimi Inari-taisha, a sprawling temple complex with an approximately 2.5 mile hike up the side of Mount Inari. We also had one more pit stop at a temple we thought we hadn't yet visited, but when we reached the top of the (long, crowded) hill where the temple sits, realized it was Kyomizu-Dera, which we'd added to our list yesterday - oops! All was not lost though, as we had a yummy beef bun for lunch. And that was only halfway through an extremely wonderful day.
Ryoan-ji Temple
Ryoan-ji is a zen temple and very different from the others we've seen in Kyoto so far. Zen simplicity is known far and wide, and the temple was much more simple and unadorned. Its main public feature is a rock garden that is considered one of the best examples of the practice in the world. There was also some lovely calligraphy, and a walk around a lake filled with lilies and lotus.
Cha-dō: The Way of Tea
There's not a whole lot to say about the tea ceremony; it's really one of those things that just needs to be experienced. I'll caption the photos with some of the ideas shared, but the whole ceremony is about being present and focusing intensely on the action unfolding and the ritual. It was really lovely and our hostess was gracious in explaining the meaning and guiding us through the ceremony.
Brief Pit Stop
The first photo was taken at almost the exact moment we realized, hey, we've been here before. But in order to keep the detour from being a complete debacle, we ate some tasty steamed beef buns (the ones on the right in the second photo). Yummy!
Fushimi Inari-taisha Shrine
Fushimi Inari is an amazing complex filled with Torii gates - which are symbols in Shintoism of the demarcation between sacred and profane. One of the symbols of the complex is the fox, or kitsune, who is seen as a messenger. The Torii throughout the complex, brilliant vermillion (orange-red) in color, have been donated by various local and international businesses, and they line the trails up to the mountain peak. They are blank on one side (the ascent) and include the name or a message from the local business on the other (the descent) in Japanese and very rarely English characters. We sweated through our t-shirts, so the number of "selfies" and portraits dropped dramatically after the first half mile or so. After we made it to the peak, we decended back to the main viewpoint station, and had the most delicious ice cream cones there ever were EVER! Or so it seemed - we were pretty sweaty. Then as we were finishing the final leg of the descent a rainstorm came through , so the camera had to go in the bag.